Hope for the New Year

The Three Muses challenge this week is the Queen of Hearts.  My collage is a stylised Queen of Heart with my sincere hope for a New Year full of Peace and Happiness.

Hope for the New Year

 A fairly simple piece today because it's Christmas and also because I have the flu and have been in bed most of the day :(
Background is midnight blue card stock with hand drawn twinkling stars using a Sakura starburst pen.  The lower portion of the page is bead gel, for no other reason than I think it's pretty to look at.
The heart is red card stock painted with Deco Art Quinacridone Gold and then sprayed with sparkling sealant.

The wings and crown are grunge paper die cuts from Tim Holtz, painted bronze and the crown has red diamante attached.
To finish I attached a Tim Holtz 'Hope' ticket dusted around the edges with Vintage Photo distress ink.

Best wishes to you all this festive season, no matter what your faith:  Peace, Love and Happiness!

I'm all heart today

I recently entered a jumbo ATC swap and I chose to do the theme 'hearts'  I produced three different types of techniques and put each one on a jumbo ATC.

The first heart is the faux metal / gold technique I further adapted and used in a recent piece.  I've have fallen in love with the burnt orange / turquoise colour combination lately.  So stunning in real life.  Here I used Golden fluid acrylics to mix up the colours before applying to the Matt board.

The second heart is rust technique, which isn't faux, it's real rust.  Its created by painting the heart with iron filings and then applying vinegar.

The third heart is faux tin, that I've also used on a piece recently.  It's a simple heat embossing technique that has the shine taken away by distressing with black acrylic paint.

Such a haunting melody

The challenge this week on Sunday Postcard Art is Haunted.  Being this close to Halloween my thoughts immediately turned to ghosts and ghouls but no inspiration came.  Then I considered that haunting could be taken in a broader sense.  This is my take on Haunted: haunted by sights, memories, smells, flavours and moments in time.

Such a haunting melody

The eagle eyed amongst you will spot that the music is upside down.  I worked with this piece for several hours today and didn't even notice until I saw the photo!

I painted the background with Golden Fluid paints and then stamped a very old piece of line art in blue across the sky area.  I then stamped the music (upside down).

To try and achieve an etherial look for the female image, I stamped it in Sepia Archival ink on white tissue paper before tearing it around the stamp.  I then glued it to the postcard using Soft Gel medium with a layer over the top.  This makes the image translucent.  Here you can see the music and vintage floral stamp through the face.

The heart was cut from cardstock and painted with Quinacridone Magenta mixed with High solids gels (gives peaks).  Once dry, I highlighted the top of the peaks with Iridescent Bronze.

I have no explanation for the heart, other than to say my muse is on a "We are making hearts" kick at the moment.  This the the fourth different heart I've made this weekend!

Everything is coming up roses

The Take a Word challenge this week was Hearts and Flowers.  I  don't usually 'do' cute, romantic things,  I'm more of a brights and bolds type of person.  However, the aim is to challenge myself so off I went into a brave new world!

Hearts and Flowers Box

 I had the idea to take the challenge literally but knew the weight of the flowers and the heart would not be suitable for paper, so I decided to alter a small wooden box.

I have been playing around with the flowers for a few days now until I arrived at a method that resulted in something that looked like a flower.  Eventually I used white card stock, die cut with two separate Sizzix dies and then applied a treatment of water and distress ink.

The heart I made from white polymer clay and imprinted with a floral stamp before baking and colouring with a pale pink paint with iridescent medium, working it well into the grooves.  I then over painted with a colour to match the flowers which turned out to be a kind of apricot although the ink was tattered rose (pink)

 I treated the box to various distress techniques, from crackle paint, distress ink, distressed ribbon etc

This is a view of the crackle paint by Viva, I really like the way it cracks.  I rubbed the cracks with distress ink to get the ink into the cracks before removing the ink from the surface.

I made a video of how I did this and have put it on my YouTube channel here. 

Technique Time

About a year ago I was very interested in card making and decided to take the Jennifer McGuire course called Inspiration Canvas.  It was a great class and I learned lots of techniques, with each being produced on a small heart along with an embellishment in many cases.
As soon as I had completed 80% of the hearts, I watched the rest of the videos, played with the techniques on paper and then gradually put everything away in a cupboard.

This weekend I took everything out of the cupboard and finally finished the canvas!  It's not exactly my style now but I'm glad I did it.  The techniques are still great and the canvas will be a prompt for alternative techniques for things I'm currently working on.

12" x 12" Inspiration Showcase canvas

While I was finalising the remaining hearts and attaching it to the canvas, I realised that I really don't like following what someone else has done.  I would probably have been happier attaching the hearts to swing tags and writing descriptions on the back, but didn't think about it early enough.

Various techniques including resist, dry embossing and stamping with paint

Stamping on canvas, painting with pearl, heat embossing, mica powder and rust techniques

Rosette and Canvas heart

Embossed canvas 

Various ink, stamp and embossing techniques.  'Create' is coated in Glossy Accents

I couldn't resist switching out one of Jennifer McGuire's techniques and replacing with one of my own - rust!